When it comes to social-networking sites, the winners win big—just pick up any business section and read about the runaway success and hiccups of Facebook. But for every hot-and-now social-net site, there are a good dozen also-rans. And others, fallen idols that soldier on with their glory fading fast (MySpace and Friendster) or more modest and targeted social networks. There are so many—maybe I should start a social network where not-so-hot social networks can hook up? Here’s a quick top-of-my-head survey of the losers and the niche networks.

Moli.com
This social-networking site founded in 2006 came on strong in 2008 promising fantastic opportunities for creatives, artists and musicians to get in each others’ faces with their latest audio, video and whatnot. It offered the option of maintaining multiple profiles from one account—a nice feature for the artist with a day job and a colorful social life—like LinkedIn (work), Facebook (personal) and music (MySpace) all in one. The site touted privacy options—but ran afoul of some bloggers for allowing spam-like friend invites. Run out of Florida and backed by $30 million in investment and some bigwig investors from Home Depot and E*trade through a parent called Mainstream Holdings Inc., it also featured a small business center and some very kooky promotional videos. The site saw a flurry of activity last spring and summer but never got above 2.5 million visitors a month— before shutting down in late 2008 when the economy went south.

Does anyone use Bebo.com? No one I know, but I’m not a British teenager. It claims to be “Your one-stop-shop for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Delicious, Twitter, AIM, AOL Mail, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail updates.” That sounds promising, but most of its users are in the U.K. and tend to be high schoolers.  AOL snatched it up in 2008, but overall it suffers (like MySpace) by being customizable and therefore usually pretty ugly. It’s also the social-net site that’s sending messages to the planet Gliese 581c—so users may be likely candidates for alien abduction.

lookbook.nu

Fashion-themed social networking?
Niche networking is the new thing. And the big risk in social networking is that you might end up messaging with someone wearing stone-washed jeans—shudder to think—when you’d rather be sharing photos of Christian Louboutin’s latest. The solution? Fashion-based social networking, of course. The problem is, which one? Fashionistas, 2Threads, StyleHive, ShopStyle? Ask a stylish woman; I did. Former Time Outer Annie Tomlin likes Polyvore for younger types and lookbook.nu for “hoity toity” fashion. Around Town’s Madeline Nusser suggests Weardrobe because it’s not too big or too pricey and run by a tasteful young couple. Lately, it’s been the destination for younger gals who don’t want to give in to Ugg boot or Hot Topic’s limited options—which is a good sign. Hey, we all need a place to go where we feel loved.